Today's rant: I am fuming over the new Smart Choices food label, which the NYT reported on here. It's a label from most of the big food companies—not the FDA or any other part of the government—that converts Froot Loops, first among other Dumb Choices, into a supposedly healthy food. I mean, really, this is crazy: A serving of Froot Loops has 12 grams of sugar, and sugar is 41 percent of its weight. The response from the academic who has somehow agreed to chair the Smart Choices board, Eileen T. Kennedy, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts, is that at least parents will know when they get to the supermarket that Froot Loops is a better choice for their kids' breakfast than doughnuts. Why should we ever set the bar that low? What's distressing is that once this green checkmark label becomes ubiquitous, precisely because of the backing of the big food companies, it will look like it's an official seal of approval from the FDA or another government agency, simply because it's everywhere.

The only consolation is that the protests over this seem to have prompted the FDA to ask for public comments about food labels like this one. The agency is supposed to look at people's beliefs about health, diet, how they use labels, and also demographics. More here from Marion Nestle, professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. She is one academic who is standing up to the industry.

Tags: marion nestle, smart choice food label

Obama was back in campaign form tonight—fighting back, and dead serious about it. And there were notes of his inaugural address, when he called on Americans by invoking “the character of the country” and our sense of responsibility. And the president soared, in that lovely ode to Teddy Kennedy at the end, which you’re right, Hanna, went straight for liberals’ hearts.

But on the specifics, on the substance, I heard more tacking to the center than love for the left. Obama promised that people who don’t have employer-based coverage, or Medicaid or Medicare, will be able to buy affordable coverage on an exchange. But then he finessed the public option. He nodded to its value, but he also said it was only a means to an end. He will not insist on it. He’ll leave it for another day. Maybe four years from now.

There was a lot else to like: No more denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, no more losing coverage when you need it most, no more bankruptcy for out-of-pocket medical expenses. And no more gender rating! This is the 80 percent of healthcare reform that the president argued there is basic agreement about, right?

Obama was short on specifics, however, for how he is going to pay for the expansion of coverage he outlined. He promised, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits. Either now, or in the future.” You had to take him on faith about that tonight, though.

The White House has now released its plan for healthcare, and we can all chew over the details, and maybe they will make tonight's outline look different in the morning’s light. But for now I feel torn between the soaring and earthly moments. Obama was winning and pitch perfect in making Kennedy our poster-child for healthcare reform, by arguing that Teddy made this the cause of his life because his children got cancer and he never forgot the terror of it. Will the text of the bill he signs meet the standard Kennedy would have held it to? Kennedy was a realist. And so the answer is probably yes. But I want to push on the question some more.

Tags: defense of liberalism, healthcare reform, obama's healthcare speech to congress, Ted Kennedy

Much about Obama’s health care speech was quite defensive. His voice was brimming with genuine anger when he talked about the “lies” and “misinformation” and “scare tactics” used to denounce his health care plan. “Lies, plain and simple,” he said. (It’s rare for a president to actually use the word “lies” outside a campaign.)

The majority of the speech was proddingly practical, in a dutiful debater kind of way. He did the same thing he’s done in the 28 speeches he’s already given on the subject—go point by point rebutting his critics on the questions of abortion, illegal immigrants, cost. And he comforted the main constituency opposing the plan—Americans already satisfied with their coverage—that nothing in their plan will change.

But then, at the end, came the rousing defense of liberalism I was waiting for. For a speech in which he was trying to forge a consensus this was a brave and risky move. You can say to that vast middle of Americans nervous about their own health insurance plans: “There, there, don’t worry, things will be good for you.” And just stop there. Or you can go one step further and move them to a higher plane, which is what he did:

“When fortune turns against one of us, others are willing to lend a helping hand.

This is the truth about health care reform. Its requires people to think in a communal way and recognize that a minor personal sacrifice will make things better for everyone. Compare this to what Ronald Reagan, then-candidate for governor of California, once said about Medicare:

“If this program passes, one of these years we will tell our children and our children's children what it was like in American when men were free.

Scare tactics never grow old.

Tags: health care reform, Obama, Obama health care reform speech

One of the many things I adore about H Plus, the transhumanist magazine, is its penchant for asking questions I would not have thought to ask. For instance: "Is there sex in the posthuman or singularitarian future?" Extropia DaSilva, a “resident of the virtual world Second Life," says hell, yes:

Polyamorism will be the norm. After all if “I” have uploaded, duplicated myself and exist as self-similar copies in cyberspaces co-existent with realspace, where does the “self” end and the “other” begin? Relationships will be tried out in simulation, combining variations of each self, weeding out combinations that do not optimize cooperation and mutual gain. A committed relationship would be to accept a complete merging of two selves. True love would be expressed by transferring the two uploads into a single, higher capacity “brain” (such as the sentient Internet itself) in which both minds run simultaneously.

My favorite response belongs to Alex Lightman, executive director of Humanity Plus:

The primary purpose of the Singularity will be seen, after the fact, to be Awesome Sex. There will be exponentially more sex, with exponentially more interfaces, and with exponentially more measures of pleasure ... We will be installing bioports into our body, a la The Matrix or Sleep Dealer, each of which can stimulate our nervous system. In heterosex, men penetrate women, but with this, men and women will interpenetrate each other, multiply, and, as with USB 2.0 daisy-chaining, so will men, women, and androids be able to multiply-interpenetrate, locally or remotely. determine how many selves would be involved. The entire field of posthuman sex could give new meaning to sex freedom and gender differentiality — where a person could have different scenarios, depending on what form or type he/she is in.

Discover oh-so-much more hott extropianism here. And be glad that the people most fervently trying to freeze themselves for eternity are the most radically tolerant among us.

Tags: comprehensive sex education, singularity, transhumanism

From Rick Hasen, based on oral argument in the anti-Hillary ad case, Citizens United v. FEC, at the Supreme Court today: "Chief Justice Roberts and Jutice Alito's questions were uniformly hostile toward the government." Since Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy have already voted to overturn the key precedent that allowed the states, and Congress, to ban independent funding of campaign ads during the weeks before an election, that's five votes for overturning this part of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. And as we know from an interesting new paper by Lee Epstein, William Landes, and Richard Posner, you can infer a lot about how the justices will vote from their questioning patterns at oral argument.

A guest post from Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health & Rights Program at the Center for American Progress:

Women have everything to gain if meaningful health care reform succeeds and everything to lose if it fails. Why? Because the current system discriminates against women in numerous ways.

Although men are slightly more likely to be uninsured, that is because women are more likely to qualify for a government program like Medicaid, which provides health insurance for the poor. While 39 percent of women receive insurance through their jobs, 25 percent obtain insurance as a dependent of a spouse, partner, or other relative. Receiving insurance through a spouse leaves women more vulnerable to losing their insurance if they divorce, or if their husband loses his job, becomes disabled, or passes away. And women who aren’t married usually cannot obtain insurance through another person, which helps explain why they account for 60 percent of uninsured women.

In addition, six percent of women have private insurance and 18 percent are uninsured, mostly because they can’t obtain decent, affordable coverage in the private market. And in that market, plans routinely engage in a practice known as “gender rating,” which means they charge women higher premiums than men of the same age and health status.

Private plans also commonly deny coverage for preexisting conditions that are unique to women or disproportionately affect them, such as being a survivor of domestic violence. And these plans rarely offer comprehensive maternity benefits. Here’s your baby! That will be $7,500, please, (for an uncomplicated vaginal birth in a hospital) and easily twice that or more for a C-section.

Women who have just about any kind of insurance typically have higher out-of-pocket costs than men. They are also more likely to be considered “underinsured,” meaning they have to spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care costs. Often that’s because women are more likely to suffer from a chronic condition, but it’s also because they have more routine health care needs, like an annual gynecological exam or a monthly co-pay for birth control. Indeed, during their reproductive years, women spend 68 percent more on health care than men.

But because women generally are paid less than men, they are less able to afford these extra payments. Unsurprisingly, women are more likely to delay seeking medical care because of cost concerns and also more likely to experience a medical bankruptcy.

And then there’s the pesky matter of abortion. From the media coverage (see here, here, and here), you would think this is the only “women’s issue” in health care reform. It’s clearly not, but women should still be worried about it. Despite its much-debated moral dimensions, it is one of the most common medical procedures in this country. More than one of out three women in the United States will have had an abortion by the age of 45, and yet the chances of getting a health care bill without some carve-outs around abortion seem slim.

Currently 87 percent of typical employer-sponsored plans cover abortion, but women on Medicaid, in the military, in the federal government, on Native American reservations, and others receive no coverage for abortion unless a pregnancy threatens their life or is the result of rape or incest. One quarter of poor women carry an unwanted pregnancy to term because they cannot afford an abortion, and the rest must beg, borrow, or steal to raise the needed funds—$413 on average in the first trimester and potentially up to a few thousand dollars if later in the pregnancy.

Some members of Congress, recognizing the special stake women have in achieving meaningful health care reform, sponsored a resolution to that effect last year—among them, then-Senator Barack Obama. When the President visits his old stomping grounds and addresses Congress tonight, let’s hope he remembers to make the case for why women can’t wait for health care reform.

Photograph of woman at the doctor by Medioimages/Photodisc/Getty Images.

Tags: Barack Obama, gender rating, healthcare reform

On the heels of Caitlin Mostacella's insightful post on double standards and warped cultural values when it comes to female athletes, here's some beauty news on Caster Semenya to curl your teeth (via Broadsheet):

The 18-year-old appears on the cover of You magazine with her cheeks rouged, lips glossed and nails painted. Instead of her yellow-and-green tracksuit, she dons a sleek black dress that covers up her washboard abs; gold jewelry, not sweat, drips from her neck; and her cornrows are combed out into a bouncy coiffure. The South African glossy declares in a headline: "Wow, Look at Caster Now!" Also: "Athletics star Caster Semenya as you’ve never seen her before—transformed by YOU from powergirl to glamour girl." Inside the magazine, a four-page spread shows Semenya in various feminine fashions: a sequined top and skin-tight black leggings and, according to the BBC, "a grey knee-length dress worn with a grey cropped jacket and a black-and-white cocktail dress worn with stilettos." The magazine quotes her as saying, "I'd like to dress up more often and wear dresses but I never get the chance." After the shoot, Semenya reportedly told her manager to buy all of the outfits she had modeled.

Gross. Not the young Semenya, who looks very nice. The makeover. This, we'll recall, is a bit like what happened with Susan Boyle after her starmaking turn on Britain's Got Talent. But here it seems even more fraudulent. Of course, it's hard to blame Semenya for wanting some pretty clothes—as a busy, traveling, regimented professional athlete, I'm sure that accessory shopping is hard to come by. But it's incredibly lame that, because of the earlier controversy, Semenya's natural inclination to look pretty is cast as a referendum on gender itself. See, we say, she's a woman—because she likes clothing and jewelry. Cause, meet effect.

This incident speaks to an annoying, subversive narrative of cultural fright that Kai Wright tried to unpack recently over at The Root:

It’s important to note that no one believes she has masqueraded as a woman. Rather, the hypothesis is that she’s been confused her whole life. “Clearly it was not her fault,” IAAF spokesperson Nick Davies told the BBC, in speculating about what it’ll mean if she fails her gender exam. “It’s a medical issue. … She was born, christened and grew up a woman.” She just might not be one, at least not by IAAF’s standards.

So now she must endure a stunning battery of tests, stretching far past a mere dropping of the trousers. Davies explains: “There is chromosome testing, gynecological investigation, all manner of things, organs, X-rays, scans. … It’s very, very comprehensive.” Gynecological investigation? I mean, really?

Yes, excuse me—I'm off to watch Serena Williams outrun, outserve, and outlast another star-crossed U.S. Open opponent.

Photograph of Caster Semenya by Lee Warren/Gallo ImagesGetty Images.

Tags: Caster Semenya, female athletes, gender discrimination, makeovers, You Magazine